


Like A Monster

by breakforanarchy



Category: Lucifer (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angels, Case Fic, Crossover, Demons, F/M, First Time, Lucifer is Lucifer, Lucifer plays matchmaker, M/M, Magic, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, There is no infidelity in this fic, Threesome - M/M/M, Violence, author is pretending that Lucifer season 2 and Sherlock season 2 line up, in case it's important to anyone, in his own weird way, just lucifer being lucifer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-03-08 23:31:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18904876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breakforanarchy/pseuds/breakforanarchy
Summary: A series of sacrificial murders take Sherlock, John, and Mycroft to Los Angeles, where Chloe is working on the same case. Meanwhile, Mycroft has one more secret than usual, Lucifer tries to play matchmaker, and everything is trying its damnedest to go straight to Hell.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Also known as: the one where the author had a crazy dream about Sherlock in blue glitter dancing with Lucifer at Lux that ended in Sherlock/John/Lucifer smut, but when writing was attempted it bred a plot and feels, siiiiigh.
> 
> Tags may be added as I go along, and it's highly likely there'll be some deckerstar later.

He walked down the staircase like he’d stepped from the shadows themselves—liquid and ethereal, dark but for the paleness of skin accentuated by the faint shimmer of blue dusted over his cheeks, the black smudge of liner beneath his eyes. Everything about the man was long and lithe, and he moved with a grace that spoke of frequent activity and iron self-control. Long, pale fingers ghosted over the banister—his eyes were downcast in an act of coyness meant to attract rather than repel. And oh, attract they did—Lucifer couldn’t take his eyes off him. Or rather, he very much didn’t want to take his eyes off him.

“Lucifer!”

“Hm? What?” Lucifer blinked and managed to tip his head toward Maze, but didn’t tear his eyes away until she punched him in the shoulder. “Ow! What?”

Maze had that pinched look of mixed irritation and murder that meant she’d been trying to get his attention for at least five minutes. Oops. “What are you staring at?”

Quickly, Lucifer glanced over the throngs of dancing bodies in search of the particularly attractive one, and pouted when he couldn’t spot him. “If I see him again, I’ll point him o—oooo, there he is! Over by the stocky blond man by the stairs. Hm, actually, he’s quite attractive too, isn’t he?” Two men in one night; he hadn’t done that in a while!

He risked a quick glance at Maze, just in time to watch her spot them. She arched one eyebrow, fought briefly for nonchalance and finally gave in to a smirk. “Okay, the tall one is hot.”

“Hot? He’s positively gorgeous.”

Maze gave a sort of shrug with her mouth and brows, tipping her head in acknowledgement. “I’d do him,” she admitted. “But pretty sure that one’s gay as hell.”

“Oh, I do hope so.” Lucifer sighed, leaning back against the bar and imagining the man spread out over his bed—still dressed, because this was the sort of person he’d unwrap slowly, savoring every revealed inch.

Without looking away, Lucifer took a sip from the whiskey glass he’d all but forgotten he was holding.

“If you don’t go, I’m gonna,” Maze purred in his ear.

Lucifer grinned. “I want him to spot me first. See what he does.” Though, he didn’t object at all to the idea of the two of them teaming up to seduce the man. Her aggression could be a bit much for some, but there was a spark in this man’s eyes, cool and confident, that made him think Maze’s forwardness would either be outright rebuked or taken as a challenge.

He was just taking another sip, which put him in that position of not-so-coyly watching over the edge of his glass, when the man saw him. Blue eyes narrowed as they danced over Lucifer’s face and body, then abruptly widened as full lips formed a small “oh!” of surprise. The man immediately turned to his companion and gave him the same once-over, nodded to himself in apparent satisfaction, then whirled back around to face Lucifer. This time they locked eyes, but the man appeared to have none of the usual human sense of shame and proceeded to do exactly as he’d done before.

Lucifer usually didn’t care to sort out one noise over another while he was in his club, but his curiosity was too great. He singled out the man and his companion in time to hear the blond man yell, “ _Sherlock!”_

The man blinked, but didn’t take his eyes off Lucifer. “ _Hmm?”_

_“What the bloody hell are you staring at?”_

_“Mm.”_ The man smirked and oh, _oh,_ that was it, Lucifer was going. He abandoned his whiskey, straightened his jacket, and strode straight toward the man with the sound of Maze’s deep chuckle of approval trailing behind him.

As he got closer, the man’s—Sherlock’s—scent reached him, something spicy and dark that brought all the contradictory nature of fire to mind, destruction and creation curled into a single wisp of smoke. It was… strangely complex for a human, and just as strangely intoxicating.

Sherlock didn’t move or make any indication that he wanted Lucifer to stop his approach, so Lucifer offered only a grin and a bright, “Hello!” before he wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and kissed him.

 ~

Two Days Ago

~

There were times when Sherlock scared John Watson right down to his soul.

The apparent lack of empathy, the eagerness for murder (and creative murder at that), the extreme focus and childish tantrums, all of these were things John could handle. He was fully aware that empathy wasn’t required for compassion, and he’d witnessed Sherlock’s capacity for compassion—even if he did tend to express it in the oddest ways. The need for his mind to be worked and the morbid focus it took, fine, that was all fine, it wasn’t as if Sherlock was committing the murders himself and besides, he helped people. A lot of people. And in the last year, he seemed to be slowly becoming aware of the fact that there were real people involved in his cases, which John counted as a truly massive win. Even the tantrums were understandable—John could safely say Sherlock was neurodivergent in some form or another, and had an incredibly difficult time expressing anything outside of facts. Bouts of depression and mania, while no picnic, made sense once John understood just how trapped inside his own head Sherlock was (and how little practice he had dealing with the emotions he liked to pretend weren’t there).

But there was the need for puzzles, for mental stimulation—and there was this.

There was a man’s body, naked, displayed on an inverted pentagram so that his head was aligned with the downward point, and his limbs were splayed to touch the tips of the remaining four. There was the fact that the pentagram was constructed of iron and spikes, and that the man had been alive and conscious when he was forced down onto them—as he had been when they cut out his heart. It was at that point in his examination that John was forced to step away before he threw up all over the crime scene.

Lestrade was standing beside him now, just outside the taped-off area, offering silent support and a grounding hand on John’s shoulder. All of which John would have been very grateful for, if he wasn’t so distracted by the sight of Sherlock…

John sucked in a sharp breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, nothing had magically changed—the body was still there, the police were still milling about, and there was Sherlock, still prowling on his hands and knees around the body, lips parted and eyes wide—his pupils had been dilated when John walked away, though he couldn’t see them at this distance.

“Haven’t seen him like this in a while,” Lestrade offered quietly.

John shuddered and tore his eyes away, darting to the police tape and a nearby officer before finally coming to rest on the safety of Lestrade’s face. “He’s…” John swallowed. Gritted his teeth. “He’s aroused, Greg. He’s fucking aroused.”

Lestrade’s fingers spasmed against his shoulder, gripping tight enough to make John grateful he wasn’t holding the scarred one. Nothing changed about his expression, though now that John was looking for it he could see a flatness in Lestrade’s gaze, still directed at Sherlock.

“He used to be like this all the time,” Lestrade said. “With the particularly gruesome ones. I thought it was the drugs at first, then I thought… well, for a while I thought, I can’t arrest him unless he does something. But then he got… I dunno, quieter. Since he’s known you, this is the first time I’ve seen it.”

John nodded, grasping onto the hope of improvement the way Lestrade was still gripping his shoulder. “I don’t know what scares me more,” John admitted. “The fact that he’s capable of that sort of darkness… or the fact that in the end, it doesn’t mean anything because I won’t leave.” He sighed, letting his chin fall to rest against his chest for a moment. “Who knows what the drugs did to him. Or maybe he just…”

“Needs us,” Lestrade finished, and John nodded again.

They fell quiet as Sherlock strode toward them, snapping his gloves off and shoving them into his pocket. He looked… pale, John noted with gut-wrenching relief. His gaze was somewhat vacant as he came to a stop beside John, refusing to make eye contact.

Whatever that was, at least it bothered him.

“Alright, let’s have it,” Lestrade prompted.

Sherlock blinked, pulled in a sharp breath, and said the last thing John expected. “Haven’t a clue.”

“I… _what?”_ Lestrade scrubbed a hand over his eyes, then abruptly plunged the same hand into his pocket for his phone. “Hang on, let me get a video…”

“Oh, shut up.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Victim is single, lives alone, has two cats, works construction, and wasn’t killed here. So far so obvious.”

“How the bloody hell do you know he’s single?” John blurted out before he could stop himself. Two cats, fine, he could see how Sherlock might get there, and even he could tell it was obvious that man wasn’t killed here—not enough blood—but single…?

Sherlock just gave him The Look—the one where he would half roll his eyes and arch his brow as if to silently say really, John, you haven’t learned my methods by now? At first, John desperately wanted to punch him in the face every time he used it, but lately there were a few differences—a crinkle to the corners of his eyes, a slight lift to his lips—and now it just made John laugh and shake his head, yes, of course, how dare he question the great Sherlock Holmes.

“There’s nothing of the killer, though,” Sherlock continued, soft and quick, the way he always did when something excited him. “Nothing. Except that we are either looking at one very large and fit individual, or several killers, considering the size of the victim.”

“Spikes aside, I only saw bruising around his throat. I would have expected more signs of a struggle, especially if there were multiple people holding him down,” John said.

A generic ringtone went off, loud enough to make John jump and then silently berate himself for doing so. Lestrade, after a glance at his phone, shook his head. Sherlock’s was on silent because, and John was quoting, “Everyone is hateful today, John. Everyone.” (John had learned a long time ago not to take those comments personally). That just left John. The two people most likely to call (or text) him were standing right there, which meant this was either work, Mrs. Hudson, _maybe_ Harry, or…

With a sigh, John punched the answer button and handed it straight to Sherlock.

“No.”

“I’m not talking to your brother because you can’t be bothered to turn your ringer on,” John insisted, shoving the phone into Sherlock’s chest.

For one long, excruciating moment, Sherlock let his arms just hang at his sides. It wasn’t until John practically punched him with the phone and took a threatening step closer that he finally gave the kind of heaving, drawn-out sigh that would make a sulky teenager proud and snatched it from John’s hand.

“What?”

Whatever Mycroft said, it made Sherlock’s eyes light up and a slow grin curl into his lips like a stretching cat, rested and ready to pounce. He listened for a few more minutes, then hung up without saying a word.

“Good news?” John asked, only partially sarcastic.

Sherlock’s grin grew. “This isn’t the first,” he said. Then he snapped up his coat collar and walked away, leaving John to sigh his frustrations and stomp after him.

“There’s been another?” John prompted as he caught up to Sherlock, waving his unfairly magic hand into the street—the man never had a taxi pass him by. Ever. It wasn’t natural.

Sherlock waved John into the taxi that stopped for them and slid in beside him, practically vibrating. “Two more before this one,” he said once they were moving. “In Brighton and Edinburgh, at roughly the same time, and two more just now, one near Heathrow and one…” and here his eyes gleamed, goddamn gleamed like he was some kind of comic book supervillain, and what did that make John for being so captivated by it? “In America,” Sherlock finished. His grin could officially be described as Cheshire Cat-worthy.

“So there is more than one killer,” John murmured, sinking back against the seat.

“Yes, but too far apart to be working together, and all the victims are strong. One might even say ideal.” Sherlock steepled his fingers together, eyes glazing as he inverted his attention into his own mind. He looked almost evil in that moment—all he needed was black eyes and sharp teeth to complete the demonic delight he was taking in all of this.

And still, John wanted to stay with him.

“Ideal?” John asked.

 The Cheshire grin somehow grows. “They’re sacrifices, John. We’re dealing with a cult.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can get updates (or just come hang out) on my [tumblr](http://breakforanarchy.tumblr.com).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized about halfway through chapter two that I was setting everything in season 2 of Lucifer, not 1, which works for me because I really wanted to add Ella.

No matter how many times Chloe saw the truly horrific, it never got any easier. A cliché, sure, but no less true. Gunshot wounds, strangulation, stabbings—crimes of passion, those were awful, but at least she could understand them.

This… there was nothing understandable about this.

Chloe closed her eyes. Took a breath. The person—or persons—responsible needed to be caught, and for that to happen, she needed to keep her cool. She blew out her breath, fast and hard, and opened her eyes.

The woman was suspended upside-down on a spiked iron pentagram mounted to the alley wall. Suspended while still alive, according to Ella. Still alive when her heart was cut from her chest, while the blood poured out of her…

“She wasn’t killed here,” Ella said. She sounded so calm, almost cheerful. Chloe envied that ability.

“Not enough blood,” Chloe agreed, nodding.

“Right. That means whoever killed her mounted this thing on the wall while she was on it.” Ella stepped back, shaking her head as she surveyed the display. “Whacked, right?”

“Whacked.” Chloe let herself shudder, just once, before she shook her head and turned away—there was nothing more she could learn from staring into the dead woman’s eyes. “Anything on the body?”

“Nope, no wallet, no keys, nothing under her nails, there aren’t even any signs of a struggle!” Ella twirled her hand over the body and struck a pose, like a magician about to reveal the final act. “She has some bruising around her throat and that’s it. So, it looks like someone grabbed her with one hand.” Ella spread her gloved hand out a few inches above the victim’s throat. “And just WHAM! Slammed her right onto the spikes.”

“Jesus. Okay, so, everything about this screams premeditated.” Chloe frowned, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned in to examine the gaping wound in the woman’s chest. It was jagged around the edges, the flesh torn outward in long strips. Her limbs were splayed so that her fingers and toes reached for four points of the pentagram, with her head aligned to the downward point. “And definitely sacrificial, but… does this seem really specific to you?”

“Like they’re trying to get a certain someone’s attention?” Ella nodded. “Oh yeah. I think our own personal devil is gonna be _pissed._ ”

And because Lucifer had some sort of preternatural sense of the best (or worst) possible moment to make a grand entrance like the drama queen he was, that was when he chose to step up beside Chloe and groan, “Oh, bloody hell!”

Rolling her eyes to the sky, Chloe twirled one hand in Lucifer’s direction in a general _go ahead_ sort of motion. When no words were forthcoming, Chloe glanced up to find him frowning down at her.

“Well?” Chloe gestured toward the body. “Go on. Tell us how this is all about you. Get it out of your system.”

“Oh oh yeah, how would your character react to this?” Ella asked, bouncing in place on her toes. “I mean, you seem way more ‘sympathy for the devil’ than ‘chaos and destruction’ devil, so I’m guessing…?”

“We need to find whoever did this and punish them immediately,” Lucifer growled through gritted teeth. “How humans got it into their minds that I’d grant them their desires in exchange for murder is beyond me.”

“We don’t have any leads yet,” Chloe said, ignoring the second half of his statement. Despite the fact that she knew they meant different things, she was heartily in agreement with the first half. “But hopefully they left some sort of evidence on the body.”

“I’ll let you know the second I find out,” Ella told her, and Chloe nodded and headed for her car, Lucifer on her heels.

“There’s really nothing for us to do right now,” Chloe said, though she didn’t stop him from sliding into the passenger seat. “Want to get some lunch?”

She waited for the date remarks to begin (which, honestly, didn’t bother her, not coming from Lucifer, because all it took was a “no” and he would let it drop) but Lucifer only beamed and suggested Chinese.

They made it a whole hour without any sort of devil talk before Lucifer, between mouthfuls of noodles, said, “You know I’d never ask someone to hurt another innocent human, right?”

They were eating in the car, take-out boxes strewn over the dash and their laps. Chloe watched the steam rise from them for several seconds before she made herself look over at him. His brow was pinched into a tight frown. He was stabbing his noodles with his chopsticks, then stirring them rapidly until they looked a lot more like mush then food.

“Lucifer, of course I do,” she finally murmured. The whole devil metaphor he insisted on living in was confusing and, at times, overwhelming, but the gems of genuine Lucifer that she got to see made it worth it every time. She hoarded them like a dragon, becoming increasingly protective of them and him the more she received.

Sometimes, all she wanted was to ask him what had happened to him to make him retreat into such an extensive fantasy, and to have him give her an honest answer. But whatever it was, it wasn’t something she could demand. That particular gem had to be offered, not just caught. Whenever the urge to ask him rose up in her, she had to remind herself that she was his friend, and that it was none of her business unless he made it so.

He nodded, more to himself than her, and tried to pick up a mouthful of his noodle-mush. It promptly plopped straight back into the container. Lucifer stared down at it like an offended cat, all wide disbelieving eyes. Chloe snorted, almost choking on her own mouthful of food, and then they were laughing like a pair of complete idiots and didn’t stop for what was probably an absurd amount of time.

This was why Chloe liked him so much, weirdness and all. Because damn if he didn’t make her laugh and forget, if only for a few minutes, about the mutilated body they’d left only half an hour ago.

~

Dan met them at Chloe’s desk an hour later. “This isn’t the first one,” he said, wincing and tossing down a file of photos and paperwork Chloe knew for a fact she didn’t want to see. She picked it up anyway. “There have been dozens of these murders all across the U.S, and just as many overseas, just in the last week. The Lieutenant just got off the phone with some contact of hers in the U.K, apparently he and a couple of his agents will be coming here to work with us.”

“What? Why?”

Dan shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe they think this… cult, or whatever it is, is based here?”

Maybe, but sending agents all this way when they could investigate from their end seemed a bit extreme. Unless they knew something, though that could still be communicated over the phone. Putting it aside for now, Chloe shuffled through the files, each one the same—the pentagram, the hearts, the position, all of it. “If they’re custom ordering these pentagrams, maybe we can track down the company or artist that made them?”

“Worth a shot.” Dan took the photo Chloe was currently holding and took it to his desk—and in the five seconds that took, Lucifer had taken the rest of the paperwork, shuffled through it, and taken off with the whole stack.

“Lucifer!” As usual, he did what he wanted and Chloe sighed, rolled her eyes, and followed him to Ella’s office, where he was opening a map of the U.S. she’d apparently given him.

“What are you doing?” Chloe leaned over the table, watching as Lucifer glanced at files and found the cities listed, his finger tracing over the paper and tapping each one.

“Oh, oh!” Ella scurried away from the table and came back with a packet of slim, brightly colored sticky labels. “Here!”

“You think there’s a pattern,” Chloe said, watching as both of them started marking cities.

“I think…” Lucifer trailed off as he stuck several over one particular spot on the map. He didn’t say anything more because he didn’t need to.

“Shit,” Chloe breathed.

There were fifty-eight U.S. murders in the file. Forty-one of them were in California, each one moving just a bit closer to Los Angeles.

For a moment, Chloe was as overwhelmed as she had been at the first crime scene. One of these was bad enough, but this many people killed in such a painful way, in only a week, and so many suspects—the murders were spread out over thirteen states to start, none of them far enough apart in time to have been committed by the same person, so they were looking at a minimum of thirteen killers in America alone, likely more. How long had this been developing? Had they killed before, had they… rehearsed this? She’d encountered Satanists, but they were almost always either harmless or kids with grand ideas that got out of hand. This was organized, efficient—these were believers, in the most dangerous sense of the word.

She heard her name as though she were underwater, distant and garbled. A blink, a shake of her head, and suddenly she was aware of a hand over hers—large, warm, a loose enough grip to easily shake off, though she didn’t want to. It felt like the safest point in the room and she reached for it, curled her other hand around the wrist and held on.

“Sorry,” she said slowly, making herself focus on—Lucifer, of course. “Sorry, just… got lost there for a second.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, and when she glanced up his dark eyes were wide—she’d never met anyone who could be so openly sincere as Lucifer.

“Definitely don’t,” Ella agreed. “If I were letting myself really think about it, I’d be in the same boat.”

The horror turned to steely resolve between one blink and the next. Chloe let go of Lucifer and he drew back, offering only a smile as he retreated to his side of the table. “Right. So, we know they’re moving into the city, though… if this was their intended target, why start out spread all over the place? And what’s drawing them in?”

“Maybe they’re trying to open a hellmouth?” Ella grinned in that way she did when she was making a reference that almost always went right over Chloe’s head.

“A what?”

“Oh my _god,_ how have you not seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You’d love it! We’re having a marathon as soon as this nightmare is over.”

“Uh, sure, okay.” Chloe shrugged because why not, if nothing else it would be fun to hang out, and she’d probably need some friends and silliness after this mess. “Sounds good. For now, have you found anything?”

“Not yet, so far the scene is squeaky clean.”

Chloe nodded because of course it was, why would they make it that easy for them. “Okay, Lucifer, let’s get this sorted out and start doing some research, see if there’s anything besides, you know, the literal devil that’s making them target L.A.”

“Every single one of them has a special room in Hell if they’re here for me,” Lucifer growled. “And even if they’re not, they still do. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“This is the boring bit.” Lucifer waved his hand at the paperwork now strewn all over Ella’s workspace. “I’ll be back tomorrow!”

Chloe opened her mouth but by then he was gone, and she wound up letting out a sigh and an exasperated chuckle instead. How he could be so passionate one moment and childish the next was beyond her. It frustrated the hell out of her at times, but the more she got to know him, the more she suspected it might be a kind of coping mechanism. That or just an underdeveloped maturity level.

…or both.

 ~

 Lucifer already had his hands pressed together and his eyes closed before he remembered Amenadiel couldn’t hear him anymore.

“Well, that’s annoying,” he muttered as he dug out his phone.

It rang five times before Amenadiel said, “Hello?” just a bit too sharply—he hadn’t warmed up to cell phones the way Lucifer had.

“Brother dear! Now, don’t panic—”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! Why is everyone always asking me that. Look, I’ve just left the Detective, and… well, it’s possible. Not a for sure of course, probably just crazy radical humans, but there’s just the slightest chance…”

“Lucy, spit it out.”

Lucifer sighed. “I think some demons may have escaped Hell.”

There was silence for so long that Lucifer thought Amenadiel had hung up. He was just pulling the phone away to check when he heard, “Some?”

“Ah, yes, well, if it’s true, and remember that’s a big if… let’s just say it would definitely count as a horde.”

Another silence.

“Get. Back. Here.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Yes yes, I’m on my way. Is Maze there?”

“Yes.”

“Great, have her meet me downstairs.”

 ~

 The next day or so went about as well as could be expected. Amenadiel yelled at him, then tried to lecture him, then went off on a tangent about how he was powerless now and what was he supposed to do? Lucifer tuned him out around there, and by the time he started paying attention again Amenadiel was gone.

Maze seemed torn between irritation at the potential Hell breakout and intrigue. She kept asking Lucifer to describe the photos to her and looking just a tad too turned on for his tastes—at least, until he informed her that at least some of those people, of not most of them, were innocents. She’d been here long enough now, made enough friends (which was still the oddest thought) that she abruptly went silent and started handling her knives a little too much for comfort.

“What if it is demons?” she asked when he came back from day two of the investigation—he’d left a few hours before the agents from the U.K. were supposed to arrive. He was curious, but not curious enough to stick around when there were still no leads to follow.

Lucifer poured himself a whiskey and, almost as an afterthought, poured one for Maze as well. It seemed to mean something to her when he did it, and though he couldn’t quite figure out what it was it certainly didn’t hurt him to make the effort. “I don’t know,” he said only after he’d sipped away half the glass. “We’ll deal with that if we find out it’s true, I suppose.”

He spun around so he could lean back against the bar, whiskey in hand. The song changed, something he didn’t recognize with a fast beat that made several people on the dance floor cheer. Probably something new, then. He rather liked it, actually—enough so that he considered going out for a dance.

Until a positively beautiful man walked in the door, and Lucifer promptly forgot everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's commented so far! <3 (Comments make my day :D)


End file.
